


Day One Hundred Thirty-Four || I Never Expected ___

by 365daysofsasuhina



Series: 365 Days of SasuHina 2019 [134]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 20:07:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18835852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/365daysofsasuhina/pseuds/365daysofsasuhina
Summary: None of this is what he planned. But as soon as she started wiggling her way back into his life...it was inevitable.





	Day One Hundred Thirty-Four || I Never Expected ___

None of this was ever supposed to happen.

When they met, there’s was a strange kind of...connection. Sometimes that happens with kids. You shove two together, and in five minutes it’s like they’ve known each other their whole lives. And that’s exactly how it had been with Sasuke and Hinata, ever since that fateful day they became neighbors. There’d just been that...click between them. And of course, where one brother went, the other followed: the trio were a little troupe of tiny friends.

At least...until the fateful day Mikoto and Fugaku were lost.

Sasuke had never faced much loss until then. Never had any pets to practice grieving. Never parted from any friends. Suddenly a huge chunk of his world was just...gone.

And he felt gone with it.

He withdrew from everyone and everything...except his brother. They clung to each other like tiny sailboats loose in a hurricane of grief. When his aunt and cousin came to live with them, he hardly paid them any mind for the longest time. Nothing mattered. His pain drowned out everything else.

Even his best friend.

He’d known about Hinata losing her mother. It was one of the first things he learned about her. But back then, he had no concept of such a loss. His young mind couldn’t wrap around it, too centralized on his own experiences and life. Maybe if he’d been little older...he would have remembered that. Realized that, beyond his brother, Hinata knew just how he felt.

...but instead, he left her behind.

School was a fog. He went, he learned, he came home. Spoke to almost no one. Did the bare minimum to participate and pass. As the years slowly crawled by, little changed. The fog lessened, but his disinterest in it all was ever-present. He didn’t care about relationships: friends, girlfriends, sports teams...nothing. He just coasted through his days on a strange kind of autopilot, blinkers on to blind him to everything else.

Even her.

Eventually his apathy turned darker. He turned to loud, distracting music. Dark and gruesome movies, video games, anything to try and fit an aesthetic that he convinced himself was suited for him. But even then, there was still an overreaching numbness. Though he no longer actively mourned his parents, the hole they’d left remained. The edges were scabbed over, scarred and tough...but the gap was still as wide as the day they died.

Then...something happened.

He’d taken up guitar when he started high school. Why? Well, he did like music. Rock, mostly. But part of it, he would admit, was just...fitting a mold. An image. A reputation. He was practicing a long-forgotten ballad in the late hours of an evening. His mother’s favorite song. And little did he know, he had an audience across the tiny gap of yard between their houses. It wasn’t apparent until he looked up, spying her spying and watching as she recoiled and...hit her head.

...it was so reminiscent of how she’d been when they were younger. To his honest surprise, he didn’t flinch back from her. Teased her, even.

For a moment, it was like they never stopped talking at all. But then she asked if it was real. If he would just go back to pretending she didn’t exist come tomorrow.

And he realized...he didn’t want that. Not anymore.

So he told her to come home.

Slowly, things...went back to normal. If you could call it normal. There was, admittedly, still a kind of distance between them. It was like two wild animals meeting after years of separation. They edged around each other cautiously, not quite sure if what they were seeing was what they remembered.

But then it all started coming back.

They started hanging out after school. Meeting up between classes. Talking, laughing, letting their guards down. Maybe still a bit nervous they’d realize they’d each changed too much to remain friends, but...in reality - in the ways that counted - they really hadn’t changed at all.

She was like a breath of fresh air. Sure, he had Naruto...the thorn in his side he still called friend. Their friendship was more like...a habit. A routine. The same old thing over and over again. But Hinata didn’t feel that way. He looked forward to seeing her, hearing about her day, reminiscing and just...enjoying each other’s company.

Sasuke started sneaking her out at night: the one thing he didn’t share with anyone else. Not even Naruto. The night was his and his alone. Silence, stillness, solitude. But she fit alongside it all perfectly. Unobtrusive, as always. She never felt out of place.

And yet he always noticed when she wasn’t there.

He’s not really sure when he noticed. If it was gradual, or hit him all at once. But when he glanced over to look at her that night, her own face so lit up with excitement at the streaks of light across the night sky, it all sank into place.

...he loved her.

It almost felt selfish to think. He’d abandoned her for so long. Left her alone. No word of goodbye, no explanation...even if maybe the latter wasn’t necessary. It still felt like he’d done her wrong.

...and he did.

In truth, he’d had no intention to ask her out that night. It just...happened. And to both his fear and elation...she’d said yes.

For a time, nothing really...changed. Neither of them knew what steps to take. Then one day, he held her hand. Another, she brushed hair out of his eyes, the pair caught staring before retreating apart bashfully. And it was unspokenly agreed that they wouldn’t tell anyone. At least, not to start.

That didn’t stop Itachi from noticing right away. But he was always uncannily good at reading his little brother.

“I never expected you to finally realize what you felt about her.”

That earned the elder a scowl. “...meaning?”

“And here I thought it was rather obvious from the beginning. But...well, we know what happened then. So perhaps it’s not so hard to imagine, picking up where you left off. I’m glad you’re making progress, Sasuke. I’m sure she missed you just as ardently as you missed her.”

“...yeah...I think you’re right.”

In all honesty...he never expected this either. To fall in love with her.

But here he is.

And this time...no more leaving her behind.

Not again.

**Author's Note:**

> Late again, oof @~@
> 
> More narrative-style modern stuff. Not quite what I envisioned when I started, but...sometimes you gotta just crank it out, lol - my eyeballs are screaming and I need to sleep. So we'll just call it there, and hope tomorrow is better, aaha.
> 
> Anywho, thanks for reading~


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